The rise of AI technology in the last couple of years has been phenomenal. Now, it seems that every piece of technology in your home or on your person is powered by some kind of intelligence that wants to help. But, how many of them are actually useful when it comes to getting stuff done? Most are great at answering questions, which can be helpful, although the promise seemed to be that these assistants could get on with the tasks you didn’t want to do yourself. Well, MacPaw is about to change that with the introduction of its Eney AI assistant, one that’s purpose built for action rather than just talk.

One Interface that works across multiple apps

With many jobs these days involving tasks that are handled by different apps, it can be time-consuming having to switch around to do simple things. Whether that’s opening your email, calendar, messages apps or just having to delve into Finder to track down a document or file you’re after. These constant changes can not only interrupt your flow, but also increase the chances of being sidetracked by the many other things vying for your attention.

Eney looks to address this issue by giving you just one interface through which you can tell it to handles these tasks. Thanks to its support for third-party apps, you just open Eney, make the request (in natural language, so you don’t have to learn any prompts) then the assistant will take care of the rest. No getting sucked into a group chat, email chain or other distraction, just fast and efficient actions that allow you to carry on with your work.

It’s not just basic tasks either, as Eney can handle multi-step actions across the apps you already have, without constantly requiring your attention. Whether you need it to send a quick message in Gmail, attach a file from Google Drive, or update your team on Slack, Eney can quickly make it happen.

An intelligent, proactive assistant with privacy built-in

Alongside helping you to find files, draft emails, and plenty of other useful activities, Eney also acts as an intelligent assistant that’s there to ensure you don’t miss important meetings or tasks. There are several workflows (automated tasks) built-in that require no assembly by you but which can instantly boost your productivity. Helpful things like a morning catch-up on all the news relevant to your interests or responsibilities, a review of your week, planning the day ahead, all of which is automatically delivered to you by Eney. It can also join you on meeting calls, transcribe the conversation, then present you with a summary and action points.

The proactive nature of Eney means that it’s always on the lookout for important dates and tasks in your calendar, messages or email, which it can then bring to your attention ahead of time so you don’t miss deadlines or be unpleasantly surprised by something you should have done. It’s like having a top-class PA that lives on your Mac.

As Eney is created by the same people that brought you CleanMyMac, it’s no surprise that you can also ask it to clean up your desktop, organise your downloads, and remove clutter from your file system so things run smoothly.

Of course, with all that responsibility, you’ll want to know that your data is safe and secure. That’s why the on-device nature of Eney is so important. The software is built to process data on your Mac, keeping your personal files and information local rather than sending it to an online server.

Try Eney for free on your Mac

If you want to take your productivity to the next level, then you can download Eney to your Mac today and take the free 14-day trial. You don’t need to give any payment details and the trial is fully functional, so you can see how Eney really works. Once the 14 days are up (or you exhaust the 10,000 included credits) you can sign up to a monthly subscription for as little as $14.99 (around £11.20), which you can cancel at any time.

AI is meant to improve our lives, not make them more complicated. With Eney, this might finally be true.

The new Siri AI architecture is about more than just answering more questions or having a back-and-forth conversation. It’s about being able to move data between Apple devices, securely and privately, to perform AI tasks elsewhere.

In much the same way as your iPhone can send an AI task that’s too big for it (along with the data needed to complete it) to a Private Cloud Compute server, so too can Apple accessories and products send requests to your iPhone. It’s how the HomeView works with everyone in the house, how the Apple Watch Series 12 will provide its “audio intelligence” features, and how existing Apple TV 4K boxes will get Siri AI support.

It tells us a lot about how Apple’s future products, from AirPods with cameras to smart glasses, are going to work.

It’s all about your iPhone

At first, we thought perhaps you would need the new $299 Apple TV 4K to get access to Siri AI. Then we found out that the 2nd-gen and 3rd-gen Apple TV 4K boxes will get it as well.

It’s going to do this by sending Siri AI requests to your iPhone, as long as it’s nearby, logged in to the same account, and has been unlocked recently.

That sounds a lot like how HomeView is going to work. Ask Siri to turn on lights, and it just does it. Ask it anything that has to do with your messages, calendar, or any other personal info, and it sends that along to your (nearby, logged in, recently unlocked) iPhone. Apple did its best not to show the iPhone in any of its HomeView marketing material, but make no mistake—an iPhone is a critical part of the experience.

HomeView even goes a step further and uses your iPhone as a hub for audio and video apps that aren’t installed on it, running them via CarPlay directly from your iPhone.

When the Apple Watch Series 12 was released last month, it shipped without a key feature: Audio Intelligence. This ability to summarize conversations and “rewind” the last 15 seconds of speech doesn’t even really use the watch. It uses your iPhone.

The Series 12 and Ultra 4 create a secure and private wireless link with your iPhone, which does all the AI stuff, pulling in Private Cloud Compute where necessary, and then returning the info to your Apple Watch via that link again.

So by the end of this year, Apple will have four products on the market: existing Apple TV 4K (2nd and 3rd gen) boxes, HomeView, and the new Apple Watches, that all rely on a link to your iPhone to process any Siri AI request more complicated than starting a timer or turning off a light.

Future products as iPhone extensions

Back in 2001, Steve Jobs introduced the concept of the Digital Hub, with a central device (the Mac) that “added value” to the other gadgets in our lives, including CD players, MP3 players, and cellphones. Now it’s Apple’s cellphone that is at the center of the new digital hub. It now seems obvious that future AI-powered products from Apple are going to need an iPhone to work.

Whether it’s AirPods with cameras, smart glasses, or a more powerful robotic HomeView, the device itself will do minimal processing to figure out what the request is. Very basic requests will be handled on-device. Requests that need to know anything about you or access your data will get routed to your iPhone, where all that info can be handled securely and privately. If the task is too big for your iPhone, it will send it to a Private Cloud Compute server along with the relevant data, where a much bigger processor and AI model can take care of it and then immediately delete everything associated with it.

Apple has been speaking about the benefits of local AI processing for quite some time now, but no phone or laptop is powerful enough for today’s best AI models, so it built a scheme to send AI requests from your iPhone or Mac to the cloud.

Now, the same principle is being extended in the other direction: Building “edge” accessories that do even less AI processing than your iPhone, but connect to it when they need to.

This allows Apple to build smaller, lighter, and relatively cheaper devices that can still access the company’s latest AI features. And it helps future-proof those devices as Siri AI evolves. It means your HomeView or AI-powered AirPods should get smarter as your iPhone gets smarter instead of being stuck with the limited AI processing available in a $299 smart display circa 2026.

Apple doesn’t directly tell us exactly how its products work, most of the time. But it’s a nice idea to think that you might update your iPhone in a few years, providing access to all new AI capabilities, and that your Apple Watch, HomeView, smart glasses, or other products will gain new capabilities in the process.